Transported

Ch. 7

By the time we entered that dark alley where everything would happen, my breathing had returned to normal. Or it’d had time to. Now I struggled to keep it regular again. I’d sat up in my seat, having recovered from the soreness of everything, and was trying desperately to keep both my body and my thoughts under control. I was excited- No, ecstatic-I needed a new word! But I was also extremely nervous.

First, I was no good at meeting new people anyway. I’ve mentioned it before; first impressions are not a strong point of mine. Just the possibility of the entire meeting being one big screw-up worried me.

Second, add that to the fact that I was actually meeting characters that up until a few days ago were fictional. Now they were real, alive, and here. Not just any characters either. Characters I admired, idolized and yes, even loved. They all had a special place in my heart, a place I had pushed down, hidden away because of cruel reality. I had kept it down since I’d met Bumblebee because circumstances had demanded it, but he was among these characters so dear to me. But now they were reality, and the place in my heart reserved for these characters could come out from its hiding place.

And it threatened to burst.

The last thing I want to do, I thought to myself. Is fangirl. I had read many a fanfiction where the person lucky enough to go into the world they were a fan of would absolutely freak out. This is exactly what I felt like doing, and what I was afraid I would do, but it was something I would not do. I wanted, needed to be taken seriously, which would be hard enough to accomplish as a child. Add to that the fact that I had some very important information that could possibly change the course of the story, the history of this world, and you can see how important it was that I was heeded and believed.

That information was the final reason I was so nervous. How would they react? Would they believe me at all? How much should I tell, and how much should I just let happen?

I let my head fall into my tote bag, which somehow I’d been able to keep with me. This is too much, I thought, beginning to panic. I can’t do this! There’s too much to think about, too much responsibility for me! Oh God why couldn’t you have picked someone smarter, stronger, older?

Forcing my head up again, I huddled in the backseat of Bumblebee’s vehicle mode. I hugged my tote bag to my chest, having nothing else to hold on to, and brought my knees as close as I could. Subconsciously I think I was trying to curl myself into a ball.

No, calm down. I forced myself to breathe deeply, trying to slow down my jackhammer of a heart. Then I lowered my feet to the floor and slipped the straps of my tote bag over my shoulder. I swallowed thickly, rubbing my hands on my jeans to dry them of the buckets of sweat they were creating. Gross, I thought in mild disgust of my bodily functions. Well, at least I wouldn’t be shaking any hands.

When Bumblebee came to a complete stop, I took one more deep breath before gently undoing my seatbelt, opening my door and stepping out. The alley was exactly as the movie had portrayed it: dark, damp, with trash blowing in the wind. Fog obscured the road ahead, through which I could make out bright headlights.

Then he came through.

That Peterbilt 379, blue with red flames on the front came rolling out of the fog.

At the sound of a splash, the teenagers and I whirled to see a silver Pontiac Solstice GXP coming in from behind, followed by a yellow-with-red-accents Search and Rescue Hummer H2, which warbled its sirens, and a black GMC Topic C4500 pickup truck. Each of them, including the semi and Bumblebee, were all heavily modified in ways that you could not normally get them. This, combined with the overall choice of nice vehicles, is what probably made Sam mutter, “That’s it. Earth’s being invaded by alien car buffs.”